SMR: Digital Scholarship

The Library has supported digital scholarship led by Georgetown faculty and other scholars that have used the resources at the Booth Family Center for Special Collections to support their work. These projects have improved the accessibility of our resources and have given the students the opportunity to engage with primary sources.

Students have also contributed to digital scholarship within the context of their classes or focused special projects. For examples of that work, see the SMR: Student Research page.

Georgetown Slavery Archive

Initiated in February 2016 by the Archives Subgroup of the Georgetown University Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, The Georgetown Slavery Archive has become an essential repository of documents on slavery at Georgetown University and the plantations maintained by the Jesuits of the Maryland Province. It is an especially important resource for anyone interested in the decision to sell more than 310 enslaved people in 1838 and the consequences of that transaction for the individuals sold to Louisiana and others left behind in Maryland. Because of its accessibility, professors have selected documents on the site to support instruction;, and students have based research papers on the documents on the site.

The documents are selected from the Georgetown University Archives, Archives of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, and other manuscript collections held by the Booth Family Center for Special Collections. The Georgetown Slavery Archive also includes documents selected from repositories such as the Maryland State Archives, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (the Archives of the Jesuit Curia in Rome). The site also includes resources created by students and others submitted by GU272 descendants.

Powered by Omeka, The Georgetown Slavery Archive consists of digitized facsimiles of each of the selected documents with transcriptions, translations into English when necessary, and descriptions using a Dublin core standard that includes full source information. The site is searchable by keyword. In addition, the curators have created tags and collections to help users find relevant documents. The site also includes lesson plans for high school teachers.

Adam Rothman, Ph.D., Professor of History and Director of the Georgetown Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legacies, serves as the Curator; Elsa Barraza Mendoza, Ph.D. (G ‘21), Assistant Professor of History at Middlebury College, serves as Associate Curator. There have been 35 contributors to the GSA, including undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and Georgetown faculty members.

On These Grounds: Slavery and the University

On These Grounds (OTG) is a multi-institutional project funded by the Mellon Foundation that has created a common method to describe historical collections for universities confronting their role in slavery. An interdisciplinary team of historians, archivists, librarians, and digital scholars based at Georgetown University, University of Virginia, and University of Michigan have developed a common vocabulary and method to collect, organize, and describe historical data found in the documentation of slavery. This descriptive method centers upon the events that involve enslaved people, instead of the enslavers who created most of the documents.

Between August 2020 and June 2023, the project team developed a method of describing events by creating data using documents within their own collections. After the group drafted a working model and vocabulary, they invited testing partners from other universities. By August 2021, the following universities became testing partners: Hampden Sydney College, Sydney, Va.; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.; University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Va.  With the feedback from these partners, the project team posted its descriptive model in June 2023.

Searchable Databases

The representatives from seven universities developed the OTG model by creating event, person, organization, and place records that represent the information about experiences of enslaved people related to their institutions. Their experiences and feedback helped the project create a descriptive model and ontology that could be applied broadly, in a variety of contexts. The diversity of institutional partners – in terms of location, cultural heritage, and their engagement with the slave system – were essential to help the project meet its goals.

Each institution has made available a limited number of records to researchers. On These Grounds published an aggregate database that brings the data submitted by each testing partner on one searchable site. It is possible to browse the records of each individual institution.

The Georgetown test site includes data derived from a sample of documents related to the sale. Users of the site are invited to raise questions and provide feedback regarding the navigability and content on the site. Please contact Mary Beth Corrigan, Librarian of Collections for Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, mc248@georgetown.edu.

Developing the Model and Ontology

On These Grounds uses Omeka S, a software technology designed for cultural resource institutions that uses linked object data to enable users to create relationships between resources. For example, Omeka S enables users to search for individual events, limiting searches to specific places. It is also possible for researchers to learn more about the individuals described in the records and connections between some of these individuals. For the datasets created by each of the partners, this program facilitates searches across the aggregate datasets, thereby illuminating connections between universities.

The project team designed descriptive model 1.1, which defines the contents of fields used in the following types of records: event, person, organization, and place. The event record is central, as it provides a full description of the events in which enslaved people participated. The person record provides biographical information that identifies the individuals participating in these events, including white and Black (both enslaved and free) people. The organization record describes the entities that may be involved in the events, such as churches, schools, or corporations. The place record provides information on the locations of events, including towns, counties, and bodies of water.

Ontology v. 1.1 provides the standardized values and their definitions for the events described in the model. The vocabulary includes 109 terms used to describe an event as well as other terms to describe freedom status and place.

The interdisciplinary team was led by Sharon Leon, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer of Digital Scholar and former Associate Professor of American History at the University of Michigan; Brenda Gunn, Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Preservation at the University of Virginia Libraries; and Harriette Hemmasi, Dean of the Georgetown University Library. The Georgetown team included Keith Gorman, Director of the Booth Family Center for Special Collections; Mary Beth Corrigan, Librarian of Collections on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation; Emily Baldoni, Metadata Librarian for Digital and Special Collections; and Anna Lacy, Metadata Project Coordinator for Archival Collections. Nine undergraduate and graduate students assisted with the data entry process.

Presentations

The Georgetown-OTG team presented aspects of the project to several professional organizations. Links are provided where possible. If interested in other presentations, please contact Mary Beth Corrigan, Librarian for Collections on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, mc248@georgetown.edu.

Panel: “Using Digital Humanities Tools for Archival Description: the Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Initiative at Georgetown University,” Chesapeake Digital Humanities Consortium, February 26, 2021

  • Mary Beth Corrigan, “Using Digital Humanities Tools to Create Connections between Archival Collections”
  • Emily Baldoni, “The On These Grounds Ontology: A Linked Open Data Model for Archival Collections Related to Slavery”

Panel: “On These Grounds: Creating Research and Archival Tools to Aid Scholars, Students, and the Public,” YouTube (1:02:23), Universities Studying Slavery Conference, Georgetown University, April 15, 2021

  • Participants: Adam Rothman, Brenda Gunn, and Sharon M. Leon

Panel: “On These Grounds: Developing an Event Ontology and Resources for Describing Enslaved Lives,” Association of Southeastern Regional Libraries, April 15, 2021

  • Sharon M. Leon, “On These Grounds: Describing the Experiences of the Enslaved”
  • Mary Beth Corrigan, “On These Grounds: Collections as Data”
  • Emily Baldoni, “The On These Grounds Ontology: A Linked Open Data Model for Archival Collections Related to Slavery”
  • Stacey Lavender, University of Virginia, “Testing the Model”

Panel: “Building a Linked Data Model for Archival Collections Related to Slavery,” LD4 Conference on Linked Open Data, July 22, 2021

  • Emily Baldoni, “Building and Testing the On These Grounds Model”

Working Group: “Records, Repair, and Reckoning: Productive Collaborations for Archivists and Public Historians," National Council for Public History, May 2, 2022

  • Participants: Sharon M. Leon, Emily Baldoni, Mary Beth Corrigan, Anna Lacy

Workshop: “On These Grounds: Slavery and the University,” Universities Studying Slavery Conference, University of Virginia, September 27-28, 2022

  • Participants: Sharon M. Leon, Brenda Gunn, Mary Beth Corrigan, Anna Lacy, and Stacey Lavender

Plenary Roundtable Session: “On These Grounds: Describing the Experiences of the Enslaved, From Individual Efforts to a Shared Data Model”

  • Participants: Sharon M. Leon, Brenda Gunn, Mary Beth Corrigan, Anna Lacy, Jesse Bayker (Rutgers), Paula Kiser (Washington & Lee), Caroline Emmons (Hampden-Sydney)

Presentation: Introduction to On These Grounds, Community meetings, Murray Room, Lauinger Library, June 8 and June 12, 2023

  • Mary Beth Corrigan and Emily Baldoni hosted two separate groups of community historians, including GU 272 Descendants and staff affiliated with local cultural resource organizations, to evaluate On These Grounds. After a short presentation on the objectives and methods of OTG, participants tried using the Georgetown test site as a means of discovering information about Jesuit enslavement and their ancestors. Their feedback will help the project refine the Omeka S platform to facilitate its use among researchers.

Life and Labor under Slavery: the Jesuit Plantation Project

Sharon Leon, Ph.D., working as an independent scholar, explored the records of the Maryland Province Archives and Georgetown University Archives to identify the individual people enslaved by the Jesuits of the Maryland Province since the 1710s. In doing so, she has accumulated data on the events, locations, and individuals described in these records to develop the site Life and Labor under Slavery: the Jesuit Plantation Project.

Life and Labor under Slavery: the Jesuit Plantation Project has become an essential resource for genealogical researchers interested in identifying the individuals enslaved by the Jesuits. It is also possible to discern the kinship relationships of these individuals, their movement from plantation to plantation, and the transactions of the Jesuits to increase and decrease their labor force (particularly the 1838 sale). Dr. Leon has also included several historical essays that explore the living conditions, family relationships, and management of the people enslaved by the Jesuits.

Omeka S serves as the platform of this project. This project represents Dr. Leon’s initial attempt to develop a method for describing the lives of the enslaved using linked object data. On These Grounds is an attempt to standardize the methods and vocabulary that Dr. Leon first tried to develop on this site.

Jesuit Plantation Project: Maryland’s Jesuit Plantations, 1650-1838

In September 1994, the Department of American Studies launched the Jesuit Plantation Project, an early digital humanities project that engaged students and faculty alike in providing access to documentation of the Jesuit plantations. Students and faculty selected documents from the Maryland Province Archives and other collections held by the Booth Family Center for Special Collections to illustrate the operations of the Jesuit plantations and the exploitation of enslaved labor by them.

Georgetown University maintained the site until 2012. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine has captured images of the Jesuit Plantation Project, 1997-2000. Sharon M. Leon, at the time a Georgetown undergraduate in the American Studies Department, designed the project’s website.

Black Folkways and Cultural Resiliency

Initiated in January 2024, investigates how African diaspora people maintain cultural resiliency through agricultural and folk practices in the Chesapeake Bay region, the Caribbean, and Washington, D.C. Led by Anita Gonzalez, Ph.D., the Woodshed Center, A Center for Art, Thought, and Culture, is giving the students the opportunity to analyze archival sources, oral history interviews, genealogical data, and archaeological surveys to learn how the descendants of Atlantic slave trade preserved their culinary practices in the regions shaped by Jesuit enslavement.

During the summer of 2024, Dr. Gonzalez and Mia Massimino, creative director of the Woodshed, led a group of students to interview people on Cat Island in the Bahamas to learn more about their cultural practices and to explore the terrain of the island, now in the midst of a transformation due to climate change. See this GU news article on this experience, “On This Summer Trip, the Bahamas Was Their Classroom,” August 2, 2024.

Cooking Up History: Honoring African American Resilience in the Chesapeake Bay

The Cooking Up History project investigates Chesapeake Bay foodways as a strategy for memorializing descendants of the enslaved while celebrating the environmental sustenance of contemporary African American people. The Woodshed is working with churches and other community organizations to honor the presence of African American ancestors by marking gravesites and organizing storytelling circles about history and food making. Researchers will explore how descendants of Jesuit enslavement respond to limited food resources and the environment by cultivating and harvesting in an environmentally sustainable manner. This project complements the archaeological studies of Laura Masur, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology at Catholic University of America (Still, We Speak). See “Bozman Cemetery Cleanup June 2023,” for information on the project’s work at gravesites.

Other Digital Projects

The digital projects listed below provide access to documents and data that provide information about the system of slavery in the Chesapeake region and the United States that help establish the context of Jesuit enslavement.